Warren Murphy: The Color of Fear

Suddenly it was facing the other way and rocketing forward.

A long line of police cars was coming the other way. Remo warned, "Hang on," and prepared to hang a U-turn designed to bring the two converging groups of vehicles at one another.

But the approaching police cars suddenly turned off the boulevard and disappeared from sight.

Remo drove past, saying, "What was that all about?"

In the rearview mirror the pursuing cars also turned up that road. It was marked A4.

"Where does that road go?" Remo asked.

"It goes," Dominique said thinly, "to ze eastern suburbs."

"Euro Beasley lies that way, doesn't it?"

"It does," said Dominique.

"It was pretty quiet when we left it," Remo said.

A line of military helicopters skimming the low skyline also broke eastward.

"Something's up out there. Something big."

Remo turned on the dash radio.

He immediately got an excited crackle of French that didn't sound like a disk jockey speaking.

"What's he saying?" said Remo.

Dominique listened intently. Her face began to come apart like a house of cards.

From the rear Chiun spoke up. "He is saying that reactionaries have attacked Euro Beasley."

"Whose reactionaries?"

"The American reactionaries who fomented civil war."

"Reactionaries! You don't mean reenactors, do you?"

"It is possible I meant that."

"What the hell are Civil War reenactors doing attacking Euro Beasley?" shouted Remo.

When no one offered a ready answer, he pulled over to a pay phone and called America.

"Smitty, Remo. We got the Beasley guy, but something's up."

"I am receiving sketchy reports of soldiers dressed in the uniforms of the old French Second Empire Army breaching the quarantine line surrounding Euro Beasley. What can you add?"

"Try Civil War reenactors."

"What!"

"That's what the French radio is reporting."

"It all fits," Smith said in a dull, barely comprehending voice.

"Not to me," said Remo.

"No, I mean the Beasley employees-transportation charges. They entered France via the Chunnel."

"So what's their game? There's already a Beasley park over here."

"Remo, my reports are the French forces were routed by very strong colored lights."

"We wrecked those controls before we left."

"I wrecked them," Chiun called from the car.

"The reenactors were obviously carrying their own devices," Smith said briskly. "Remo, this has gone too far. The Beasley Corporation is controlling those Civil War units. I have no doubt of that. And what they have done is nothing less than an act of war."

"Okay, but that's between Beasley and France, right?"

"I do not think that distinction can be made here. In the eyes of much of the world, the Beasley Corporation is America."

"Every time that idiot Beasley launches a plan, he ends up dragging us to a hot war somewhere," Remo said bitterly.

"Remo, if you have to kill every Civil War reenactor at Euro Beasley, you will do this. Do you understand?"

Remo hesitated.

"Remo," Smith said, his voice like flint. "We cannot have a war with France over an entertainment company's mindless plans for global expansion. I want you to break their backs to the last man."

"All right."

"And if Uncle Sam Beasley is anywhere in that place, you will render him completely and totally immobile. Do you understand?"

"You want me to kill him."

"I want him destroyed to the last atom."

"Got it," said Remo, hanging up. He walked back to the car with his eyes strange, and when he got behind the wheel, his voice was thick.

"We've got our marching orders," he said, pulling away.

"Yes?" said Chiun.

"Waste the reenactors."

"Then we will waste the reenactors. "

"And kill Uncle Sam Beasley forever," Remo added.

"That will be your task."

"Why me?"

"Because you are afraid to do this, and you can only conquer that fear by doing the very thing that you dread."

And as they drove toward Euro Beasley, Remo knew that was exactly what be was going to have to do.

He just wondered if he could do it. Years ago he had been one of Uncle Sam's biggest fans.

TASK FORCE GROUP LEER Marc Moise moved among his Zouaves.

It was the beginning of the second hour of the retaking of Euro Beasley, and now that the French soldiers and the crowd had been scattered, they seized the ring of tanks and APCs that surrounded the park. In effect, they were expanding their sphere of control.

The tank-mounted howitzer and machine-gun barrels that had been pointing inward were rotated outward, covering all roads with overlapping fields of fire.

No one could approach without coming under annihilating fire. And if by chance a few did, his Zouaves would meet them with an irresistible rainbow of steel.

There was just one problem with all this. It was expressed to him in the form of a question as he moved among his charges.

"Do we wear our lead masks up on our foreheads or in front of our eyes?"

"Up on your foreheads, of course."

"And if we are attacked and must resort to showing our true colors?"

"Down before your eyes, of course."

The word was passed up and down the line. If attacked, the eye shields were to be worn on the forehead while defending with howitzer and machine gun. And if forced to pull back, the masks belonged in front of the eyes.

Marc Moise checked with every third man to be certain they understood their instructions. But in his heart he wondered about their willingness to kill. They were, after all, only Creole reenactors who had sided with the California Summer Vacation Musketeers back in Virginia because they had been offered reenactment jobs at Beasley U.S.A. Having closed ranks with the Corporation against the protesters, they had been hired on the spot.

And as they hung off the French military equipment-the first line of defense against attack-their fezzes askew, their manner excited, they looked for all the world like cannon fodder.

When the attack came, it arrived in a solitary diamond blue Citroen that coasted to a stop well short of the tank that squatted before the colorful entrance to Euro Beasley.

The doors popped open and four people got out.

They started toward the tank. They walked calmly and without fear. Except maybe for a blond guy who took up the rear. His knees were definitely knocking.

"GOD, IF THEY HUE us I hope they don't use Supergreen," said Rod Cheatwood in a nervous voice.

"Me, too," said Remo.

"Yellow, I think I could stand."

"Perhaps they will use pink," said the Master of Sinanju.

"I'd enjoy that," said Remo.

"Me, too," said Rod.

"You are all insane." Dominique Parillaud spit. "Zey 'ave machine guns and howitzers. Zey will annihilate us."

"I'd rather be annihilated than greened," said Remo.

"Or yellowed," said Chiun.

Dominique rolled her eyes. "I am not afraid of their gauche color. Only of French bullets."

"Bullets, we have covered," said Remo in a casually fearless tone.

They continued walking. Machine-gun barrels lined up on them, and excited words were shouted down.

"What're they saying?" asked Remo.

"I 'ave no idea," Dominique admitted. "It sounds like French, but no French zat I have ever heard before." She gasped. "Mon Dieu! I think zey speak franglais!"

No one fired, so they kept walking.

"No use to close our eyes," said Remo.

"How will closing your eyes protect you from bullets?" asked Dominique.

"I don't mean bullets. I mean the color stuff."

"Hypercolor," said Rod. "Too bad we don't have any lead masks," he added worriedly.

"Why do you say that?" asked Chiun.

"Lead is the only thing saturated color can't penetrate. It's too dense. When I used to work on the first hypercolor lasers, I'd wear a lead mask without any eyeholes to keep from getting hued."